[crs1026]

The two most important takeaways for me were

- The statement that the “final investment decision” will not be made until completion of the “co-development phase”… which won’t complete until roughly 2026
- The statement that ”Local Services” - which are defined as the current Windsor-Quebec City services - will be assumed by the private vendor “partner” once HFR is completed….in other words, VIA is moving to a privatized or contracted operation for the Corridor.. Now I understand why Unifor is sounding alarm on social media. This also implies there will be no broad reshaping of such services until that milestone is reached…. effectively an excuse to do little or nothing.

I seriously wonder if I will see this project completed in my lifetime.

- Paul

 

[Urban Sky]

Looking at this (the REOI) leaves me unhappy.

Lets look at the ask, first:

View attachment 384795

Then this, I went to VIA's site and asked for trips from Toronto-Montreal for tomorrow:


View attachment 384794

Ignoring the absurdly long times that I take it involve a transfer in Ottawa, you still have an average travel time of ~5hrs, much worse if you include all of the above.

So this is asking, based on the data above for a travel time in the range of 4hrs 10m, or worse.

Not ok w/that, you can run that trip every 10m all-day and I'm still not ok w/that.

I'm willing to compromise on HFR vs HSR but we need to do better than that on the travel times.

How about 54M off the best time, every trip?

Get it down to 3hr59

That's not HSR, but it is a material improvement, and a believable time w/the rolling stock ordered if the project is correctly planned, built and operated.

I just find the stated goal underwhelming.

*****

Likewise, the goal for Ottawa, based on this:

View attachment 384796


Would produce a run time of ~ 3hrs 15m

I really want to see that down to 3hrs.

******

There is no point in spending all this money to under-achieve.

Sigh.

I get the arguments.

I'm pragmatic.

This is not good enough.

If you refer to my last post, I believe that it is relatively clear which timings they take as a reference (the 2019 average travel times presented in Table 1), though it is indeed confusing that they prescribed the minimum travel time savings rather than the maximum travel times:

	TRTO-OTTW	OTTW-MTRL	TRTO-MTRL	MTRL-QBEC
Shortest scheduled travel time (2019)	4:05	1:50	4:49	3:11
Average scheduled travel time (2019)	4:27	2:03	5:03	3:24
Minimum required travel time saving	1:30	0:20	0:50	0:30
Maximum permitted average travel time	2:57	1:43	4:13	2:54

What will be interesting is whether „Local“ (i.e. non-HFR) services need to be included when calculating the „Average Speed“ metric, as insisting on this could create some very undesirable incentives…

No. Very different roles.

Agreed. The CBI‘s role is to attract investors like the CDPQi to invest into its projects, thus leveraging the CBI‘s own funds…

 

[Northern Light]

If you refer to my last post, I believe that it is relatively clear which timings they take as a reference (the 2019 average travel times presented in Table 1), though it is indeed confusing that they prescribed the minimum travel time savings rather than the maximum travel times:

	TRTO-OTTW	OTTW-MTRL	TRTO-MTRL	MTRL-QBEC
Shortest scheduled travel time (2019)	4:05	1:50	4:49	3:11
Average scheduled travel time (2019)	4:27	2:03	5:03	3:24
Minimum required travel time saving	1:30	0:20	0:50	0:30
Maximum permitted average travel time	2:57	1:43	4:13	2:54

Agreed. The CBI‘s role is to attract investors like the CDPQi to invest into its projects, thus leveraging the CBI‘s own funds…

Thanks for that.

As above, I'm ok w/the Tor-Ott travel time

I still think they need to find a way to get Tor-Mtrl under 4hrs even if its by 10s.

Psychology matters. There's a reason so many goods are priced at .99 or .97 etc. Because $3.99 reads to most people as materially cheaper than $4
$399 is better than $400 etc.

This applies to time too.
There is a need to get the right 1st digit, even if only by 60s

That is do-able here, with 200km/ph capable rolling stock.
We're not talking a moon-shot here.

 

[crs1026]

****

There is no point in spending all this money to under-achieve.

Sigh.

I get the arguments.

I'm pragmatic.

This is not good enough.

The irony (maybe I mean “the tragedy”) is how, the original HFR proposal was kept minimalist in the belief that nobody was interested in spending money on better rail service, and a bare bones investment that ran close to the black was needed before there would be enough support to propose anything grander.

And somehow, in digesting that proposal, it turns out that the bureaucrats and politicians concluded that a less constrained investment would be better, and was worthwhile…. so long as somebody else took all the risk, as so long as the product wasn’t HSR, just yet anyways…. because there is still too much pushback about HSR.

So we now have a closer-to-HSR proposal that spends much more money, still misses the higher performance goals you suggested, and requires a ponderous preparatory exercise to get off the ground.

It’s the kind of morphed-into-something-else script that the Coen brothers might enjoy.

I would be happier if VIA were only empowered to build just the Quebec-Ottawa portion, which is actually achievable in only a few years, and has the simplest technical regulatory and stakeholder paths forward. Let that demonstrate the potential for further investment.

- Paul

 

[Darwinkgo]

Unifor doesn’t like P3s. That isn’t news, nor a surprise.

 

[robmausser]

Looking at this (the REOI) leaves me unhappy.

Lets look at the ask, first:

View attachment 384795

Then this, I went to VIA's site and asked for trips from Toronto-Montreal for tomorrow:


View attachment 384794

Ignoring the absurdly long times that I take it involve a transfer in Ottawa, you still have an average travel time of ~5hrs, much worse if you include all of the above.

So this is asking, based on the data above for a travel time in the range of 4hrs 10m, or worse.

Not ok w/that, you can run that trip every 10m all-day and I'm still not ok w/that.

I'm willing to compromise on HFR vs HSR but we need to do better than that on the travel times.

How about 54M off the best time, every trip?

Get it down to 3hr59

That's not HSR, but it is a material improvement, and a believable time w/the rolling stock ordered if the project is correctly planned, built and operated.

I just find the stated goal underwhelming.

*****

Likewise, the goal for Ottawa, based on this:

View attachment 384796


Would produce a run time of ~ 3hrs 15m

I really want to see that down to 3hrs.

******

There is no point in spending all this money to under-achieve.

Sigh.

I get the arguments.

I'm pragmatic.

This is not good enough.

Theres a flaw in your logic here because you've been fed bad data.

None of those times on the VIA site are true. Its complete BS.

If you take a VIA train to Ottawa and it takes only as long as posted on their site, buy a lottery ticket.

I've taken VIA hundreds of time, and only ever been on time a handful.

Every other time is 30 minutes to 7 hours late. (7 hours late on a 5 hour train ride. Yes its an outlier but it did happen)

THATS why we are building HFR.

 

[Xav]

Unifor doesn’t like P3s. That isn’t news, nor a surprise.

Via is not equipped to handle large infrastructure projects like this. Getting expertise from another party is a must for such a big project, think DB or something like that.

At least we'll own the infrastructure

 

[kEiThZ]

This is going to be a nail in the coffin for the CIB. What's the point of them, if they can't deliver anything in a reasonable amount of time?

 

[reaperexpress]

Further to @Urban Sky 's chart above, I have filled in the distances to show the average speeds for each segment.

Distance assumptions for HFR:
Toronto-Ottawa: via Stouffville line and Havelock sub
Toronto-Montreal: sum of Toronto-Ottawa and Ottawa-Montreal
Montréal-Québec: via Mont Royal Tunnel and north shore line. I know the tunnel is impassable for VIA but I wanted a distance from Montréal Gare Centrale to Québec Gare Du Palais (i.e. not from Dorval or Montréal Côte-de-Liesse).

The following is not specifically referenced in the document, but just for fun I applied the requested time savings to the current (2019) fastest trip:

And for comparison, here are the average speeds across all departures for the two current fastest railway segments in North America, Washington DC - New York, and New York - Boston:

Thanks for that.

As above, I'm ok w/the Tor-Ott travel time

I still think they need to find a way to get Tor-Mtrl under 4hrs even if its by 10s.

Psychology matters. There's a reason so many goods are priced at .99 or .97 etc. Because $3.99 reads to most people as materially cheaper than $4
$399 is better than $400 etc.

This applies to time too.
There is a need to get the right 1st digit, even if only by 60s

I don't think the psyschology of sticker prices applies to travel times among prospective travellers because the exact number doesn't show up as prominently. Regardless of whether it takes 3h47 or 4h13, the media will describe it as "four hours". It's only the people who actually go ahead and try to book a trip who will see the exact time, and by that point, they are not going to be dissuaded by a few minutes one way or the other.

As @Urban Sky mentioned, a big question here is which trips count toward the "average travel time" in the HFR scenario. Adding together the Toronto-Ottawa and Ottawa-Montreal times produces 4h40, or 4h50 if you also add a 10 min dwell in Ottawa. If the average includes those services, there must be some Toronto-Montreal trips bypassing Ottawa which are well under four hours.

Or from another perspective: look at the average Toronto-Montreal HFR speed in the table, which assumes the Havelock sub via Ottawa. It's 139 km/h average, which is insanely fast - faster than either the Toronto-Ottawa or Ottawa-Montreal segments, faster than any train anywhere in North America, and even faster than some European 300 km/h high-speed trains. Which also suggests that the travel time includes some trips bypassing Ottawa via a much shorter route (e.g. CN Kingston or CP Winchester).

It is possible that the number only includes the Toronto-Montreal services which bypass Ottawa, but then you run into the request for "12–15 trains per day between Toronto and Montreal, HFR Services and Local Services combined". If you figure around 6 trains per day along the lakeshore route then you still have 6 to 9 HFR trips to account for. That seems like a lot of trains to route via the CN or CP mainline after having built a dedicated VIA mainline, so more likely it's a mix of 4h50 trains via Ottawa, and ~4h00 trains via CN/CP.

That is do-able here, with 200km/ph capable rolling stock.
We're not talking a moon-shot here.

200 kilometres per pico-hour is 200,000 times the speed of light, so it sounds less like a moon shot and more like a shot at the fabric of the universe

 

[turini2]

The two most important takeaways for me were

- The statement that the “final investment decision” will not be made until completion of the “co-development phase”… which won’t complete until roughly 2026
- The statement that ”Local Services” - which are defined as the current Windsor-Quebec City services - will be assumed by the private vendor “partner” once HFR is completed….in other words, VIA is moving to a privatized or contracted operation for the Corridor.. Now I understand why Unifor is sounding alarm on social media. This also implies there will be no broad reshaping of such services until that milestone is reached…. effectively an excuse to do little or nothing.

I seriously wonder if I will see this project completed in my lifetime.

- Paul

What a shame - I thought this project would be a faster and cheaper way to achieve higher speed rail at reasonable frequency and speed. In future, this could be a dedicated electrified route.
This seems like a massive own goal at present.

(2026 is 4 years away - what have they been up to for the last 3 years?!)

 

[duffo]

(2026 is 4 years away - what have they been up to for the last 3 years?!)

My read on this was actually worse. The RFP submission deadline closes in Fall 2024, and is scheduled to take 18 months (bringing us to Spring 2026 my bad, the 18 months is for the entire RFP process). Then, a 3-year co-development phase begins which precedes construction. So the actual "shovel in the ground" date would be, at absolute earliest, Spring 2029 Fall 2027, assuming no delays whatsoever...

 

[nfitz]

It looks like HFR will be using the CP corridor, does that mean it would stop at Lucien-L'Allier station rather than Gare Centrale?

As they parallel each other for quite a distance, it would be easy to put a connection. Or perhaps even some dedicated tracks down the centre.

Though I'd be happy if they knocked down that recreation centre, and shifted the service to Windsor Station. That would let them use the CP tracks around the mountain, rather the the CN tracks - and use the station at Parc, connected to the Blue Line.

Would also let them have a transfer station at Montreal West to switch between the Quebec and Ottawa/Toronto trains.

 

[Darwinkgo]

This is going to be a nail in the coffin for the CIB. What's the point of them, if they can't deliver anything in a reasonable amount of time?

The procurement timeline going forward looks pretty typical to me.

Remember that the options here weren't speedy construction with a $10 billion budget authorization up front where money can buy stakeholder consensus versus the current process.

It was status quo versus the current process.

 

[Bordercollie]

Yup, I recall Ottawa-Montreal being first on the list because it's the lowest hanging fruit. Toronto-Smith Falls requires an EA for some new alignments and will take longer, while Ottawa-Montreal can get away with a much less rigorous environmental approvals process.

Isn't the Alexandra sub rated for 100mph running? It doesn't get any faster than that.
Do they really need to bypass Ottawa?

 

[Urban Sky]

Isn't the Alexandra sub rated for 100mph running? It doesn't get any faster than that.
Do they really need to bypass Ottawa?

I believe that my opinion about the incredibly low value-for-money of the Ottawa Bypass is well known by now, but given that maximum speed is capped at 200 km/h, it will be challenging to obtain achieve a travel time of 4:13 hours over a distance of 580 km (representing an average speed of 137.5 km/h or 68.8% of maximum speed).